How telehealth is driving patient-centered care

The healthcare landscape is rapidly evolving, with telehealth emerging as a critical tool to deliver more patient-centered care. As telehealth platforms become more ubiquitous, they’re empowering patients by offering them more convenience, enhanced engagement and increased flexibility in their healthcare journeys. 

Telehealth’s emphasis on patient-centricity also aligns with value-based care principles, such as payment models and quality metrics. By providing accessible, timely, and personalized care, telehealth can improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and support proactive management of chronic conditions—ultimately boosting both patient and provider satisfaction. 

In addition to the top five therapeutic areas driving telehealth adoption, here’s how telehealth services are further pushing healthcare efforts toward patient centricity. 

Telehealth offers patients more flexibility

At its core, patient-centered care focuses on empowering patients, engaging them as partners in healthcare decisions and offering them more flexibility to meet their unique needs. Telehealth accelerates this transition by providing patients with more control over when, where and how they access healthcare services. 
Through telehealth platforms, patients can connect with providers virtually, on their own schedules, from home, work or anywhere they have access to a phone, tablet or laptop. This means they can continue to work, watch their children and do other meaningful tasks instead of spending that time driving or waiting in a doctor’s office. 
Remote patient monitoring and health applications also reduce the amount of necessary follow-up, in-person visits since they can be handled digitally. This all adds to flexibility, providing patients the option to blend telehealth and in-person care based on their needs and schedules.

Telehealth enhances rare disease management 

Contrary to its name, 300 million people worldwide are living with a rare disease. While the number of people living with a rare disease is vast, the individual diseases themselves are complex by nature due to their relative scarcity. 

This makes it challenging for many patients to connect with experts in those fields in person. In fact, nearly 40% of rare disease patients said they traveled over 60 miles to receive necessary care; telehealth can help significantly reduce the logistical burden associated with connecting rare disease patients to appropriate providers by allowing these patients to meet virtually with their providers.